4K OLED: introduction and market status - Page 4

LG Electronics is getting ready to start shipping its 2020 OLED TVs, and the company announced prices and shipping dates for most of the TV models. Amazon.com now lists the TVs which can be pre-ordered.

Starting at the entry-level, LG's OLEDBX will ship in April 2020, starting at $2,500 for the 55" model. The OLEDCX range, which will probably be LG's most popular series, will also start shipping in early April 2020, with prices starting at $2130 for the 48-inch model.

Both Sony and Panasonic announced new OLED TVs for 2020. First up, and most interesting, is Sony's Bravia A9S Master Series - the company's first 48" 4K OLED TV. The A9S is based on Google's Android smart TV platform and features Sony's Acoustic Surface and the company's X1 Ultimate picture processor among other features.

Sony also announced the A8H OLED TV range that come in either 55" or 65" sizes and support similar technologies to the A9S.

Chinese TV makers Skyworth and Konka both announced new OLED TVs, and for the first time these brands will ship their new TVs in the US (and hopefully in other countries outside of China as well). The companies did not announce the shipping date or price of the new TVs yet.

So first up we have Konka's X11 Series, that feature LG's 55" and 65" 4K WRGB panels, with Konka's ZeroBezel Ultra Design with built-in sound bar including dbx TV Sound enhancement.

LG Display announced that it will demonstrate several new OLED technologies at CES 2020 in Las Vegas next week (January 7-10).

First up, LG Display will show new applications for the aerospace market - including 55" transparent and flexible OLEDs used in airplane cabins. LG will also demonstrate a 65" bendable OLED TV, suitable for first-class cabins, that enable users to adjust the curvature of the TV to create a more immersive experience when required. It seems as if interest in OLEDs is increasing in the aerospace industry.

Cadillac announced that the 2021 full-size luxury SUV Escalade will adopt a 38-inch curved OLED display. Cadillac says this OLED will enables bold imagery, perfect blacks and the largest color range available in the automotive industry.

The 38" OLED will sport "twice the number of pixels of a 4K TV". As it seems to be a very wide format, it could be a resolution of 8192 x 2160 or something like that. As this is the first time a 38" OLED is discussed, we do not know who is developing this display. A large number of companies are developing and producing automotive OLED displays - to learn more about this exciting new OLED market, click here.

Sharp announced that it has developed, in collaboration with NHK, a 30" rollable 4K OLED panel on an IGZO backplane. This is a direct emission OLED, which sharp says is the world's largest ever produced (LG's OLEDs all use color filters).

Sharp's OLED panel is deposited on a thin-film substrate, and has a thickness of 0.5 mm. The display uses NHK's signal processing and panel driving technologies to "improve the brightness uniformity and video clarity".

HP announced a new edition to its 13.3" Spectre x360 13 laptop - which comes with an optional 13.3" 4K AMOLED display. HP will start shipping the Spectre x360 13 OLED in October 2019.

This is the first time we hear of this new 13.3" 4K AMOLED display. In 2016 and 2017 Samsung produced 13" laptop OLED displays - but with a lower 2560x1440 resolution. This was used in an 2016 HP Spectre x360 13 laptop and also in some Alienware gaming laptops. In February 2019 Samsung started to produce 15.6" 4K AMOLEDs for laptops - and it's great to hear that it is now adding a smaller laptop display as well.

In early 2019 LG Electronics announced the world's first rollable OLED TV, the 65" Signature OLED TV R. The company later announced that it will ship the TV in the second half of 2019, but now LG is delaying the launch of its signature rollable OLED TV.

LG says that the OLED TV R will ship in Korea in "2019 or 2020", but that consumers elsewhere will have to wait longer - which probably means it does not have any plans to release it before 2021. According to TechRadar, the main reason is that LG is highly expensive and LG fears that it will be difficult to find a market outside of Korea for such a premium TV.

Philips announced its 2019/2020 TV range, with three OLED TVs at the top of its line. All of Philips' new OLED TVs support Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision, HDR10+ and all feature its Ambilight surround LED Lighting feature. All the TVs use LGD's WRGB OLED TV panels, of course.

Philips' entry-level 2019-2020 OLED TV is the OLED+754, which features a 55" or 65" panel and are based on the Saphi Smart TV platform which includes built-in Alexa support. The OLED+754 is now shipping in Europe, the price in the UK is £1,500 for the 55" model and £2,300 for the 65" model.

AU Optronics has been developing OLED ink-jet technologies for many years, according to reports, and has setup a 3.5-Gen pilot ink-jet OLED printing line. Today AUO announced that the company is going to showcase its first ink-jet printed OLED panel at Touch Taiwan 2019.

AUO will demonstrate a 17.3" 4K (225 PPI) OLED display that was produced using an ink-jet printing process. AUO says that the display features a 120Hz refresh rate, a wide color gamut and high brightness (that AUO did not yet specify). AUO will also showcase 5.6" foldable OLEDs that can be folded inwards or outwards for customized design according to client requirements. The display's folding radius is 4 mm and it can be folded over 200,000 times. AUO will also demonstrate a 12.1" LTPS Micro-LED prototype, which seems to be the same one shown in 2018.